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One time in high school, I was on the phone with one of my guy friends who I was going to hang out with later that day. He had just gotten home from football practice and said he needed to take a shower.

You know, 2 weeks went by. He was just minding his business going about his high school dude stuff. And then it hit him and he froze with his mouth hanging open and he realized that maybe he isn't retarded but he sure acted that way.

"Yeah. Hey, do you wanna come back to my house and hang out? I've got pie." I blurted out, trying to find an excuse to keep hanging out with this guy.

"What kind of pie?"

"uh, Apple."

"Oh, no thanks, I don't like Apple Pie."

Four days later, I got a text that said "Doh. It was never really about the pie, was it?"

EDIT: In retrospect, I realize that it may have been his way of rejecting me without rejecting me, but we're (and still are) friends and have always had a pretty open line of communication. It's not his style to do that. But I guess the only person who really knows, is him.

I also realize that it was a terrible line, and I should have said "a drink" or "coffee". I never claimed to be smooth. I'm pretty much the opposite of smooth when it comes to the opposite sex.

It all worked out in the end, though, because shortly there after, I met my fiancee, who does, in fact like pie, and takes hints.

And now I've ruined the anecdote by talking too much. See? Not smooth.

I tried rocking my hips back and forth so my ass would rub against his crotch in bed and he just laid there, finally asking, "Having trouble getting comfortable?"

I wore the shortest dress I have when we weren't even going anywhere, no panties, and took a long time bending over the bed to reach something in front of him. He walked up behind me, I'm already smirking about my plan working, and then ... he tugs the hem of the dress down to cover my nether regions to be polite.

I came to bed naked and snuggled up next to him. He's seen me naked enough times to just accept it I guess because he just kissed me good night and was snoring after a few minutes.

I tried the grinding against him one last time a couple of months ago before rubbing my eyes, tired of beating around the bush, and rolled over to face him and ask flatly, "I'm going to save us ten minutes of confusion here. Do you want to have sex?"

I would have been in the same boat. I would have sat there thinking, "Hmm.... is she doing this because she wants the D? Or is she doing this because she is just being flirty? What if she is just doing it to have a laugh? What other scenarios could this be?" And I would have continued until I couldn't think of anything else and still probably not even act on it.

My boyfriend and I have been together for almost three years now, but we nearly didn't make it past the first two months because he was incapable of picking up on me throwing myself at him.

Our first and second dates, it was understandable that he didn't make a move. After the third date when he didn't even try to kiss me, I thought he really wasn't into me at all even though he kept asking me to come over. After about 6 dates, my roommates were convinced he was gay or I was being punked.

The 4th-6th dates, I tried to lay out clear signals for him:
1) I put my head on his shoulder and nuzzled his neck
2) I tried to cuddle up next to him
3)I gave him a back massage
4)I kissed him on the cheek when I would leave
5)I told him I found him attractive and that he clearly isn't one of those guys who knew how good-looking he is.

After 6 agonizing weeks of getting nothing out of him, not even a compliment, I was irritated. He asked me on a 7th date. I declined. A week later, he asked again and I thought, "This time for sure, he is going to make a move. Or else I'm going to jump his bones." 2 hours into our date, he was kind of doing that hover-hand thing. At this point I was more sexually frustrated than a lonely polar bear in heat. Something needed to be done.

So... I took my clothes off while he looked on completely baffled. HE HAD NO IDEA THAT I WAS ATTRACTED TO HIM UNTIL I WAS NAKED. Then he seized the moment.

Women: socialized into not making the first move and just sitting around dying of sexual frustration. Men: socialized into always making the first move, but terrified of rejection or misreading the situation. Idea: Everyone just fucking TALKS about whether they are attracted to other people.

As someone who is getting married I recently took on that strategy. There is some stuff he pays attention too. If we go shopping he pays attention to all the crap I like. Other than that I try to just be blunt. If I want sex I literally say it. If I want him off the video games I say it too. It saves me a lot of pouting.

Edit: to those saying I am undeserving of him, we both have flaws. Yes sometimes I ask him to stop playing videogames, it doesn't happen often and it is usually for a reason.

EDIT: Guys I'm sorry he didn't reply until this morning. And all he said was "that's pretty clever" and he sent it to another girl. No dice for me...I'll just go cry now. Also, reading the replies to this made me extra sad that I can't get laid.

I was at a party once, when I was about 19 years old and still a virgin, and a girl that I didn't really know seemed to keep being at the same place I was for a lot of the night. Although it wasn't a big party, so I just figured it was a coincidence. She made conversation with me a few times, but it just seemed like general talking to people around you party chatter. I do remember appreciating it, because sometimes if you didn't butt into a conversation at a party like that it felt like people were ignoring you.

Then at one point I slip outside by myself to get stoned (ah, college), and sure enough she comes out a few minutes later and asks if she can join in. "Sure," I say, "good to have some company." So we're smoking this joint and she starts asking me some general small talk type of questions, which I am grateful for because I still didn't know what to say to her. Then at one point she asks me if I she could smoke with me again, if I was going to smoke later. I tell her sorry, I only had the one joint on me, all while thinking, "who is she to ask me that? This shit isn't exactly cheap." So then she asks if I live nearby and wanted to go smoke there. I'm thinking, "What the hell, this stranger wants to smoke all my pot? No thanks." But I actually say, "Well I was really wanting to stay here for awhile...." trying to be all polite without really saying no. She says, "oh, okay..." sounding unusually despondent about it, and we go back inside.

For the next little while she seems kinda awkward around me, like all of sudden not making eye contact or anything. So I'm feeling shitty, wondering if I was more mean than I meant to be, when one of my friends, a girl who also didn't know the girl who had been talking to me, comes up and tells me, "I think that girl is into you. You should ask her out." I say, "What? No. Just because she was talking with me? No way." And she says, "Well she's been she's been eye-fucking you all night." "You're crazy. I'm not making an ass of myself by getting rejected." "Well do you think she's cute?" "Of course, but I'm telling you, she doesn't want me." "Alright, your loss."

My friend leaves, and I do a little more drinking. The party is starting to wind down a bit, so I go outside to sit on the porch by myself to relax. The girl comes outside, and without saying a word comes directly over to where I'm sitting, sits on my lap. and starts kissing me, heavily. Obviously I'm caught off guard for a moment, a girl just sat on my lap and stuck her tongue in my mouth, and nothing remotely like that had ever happened to me, but of course I start running with it. No way am I stopping her, even if I don't know what the hell is happening. That goes on for about 5 minutes before she pulls her head away and asks, "do you want to go to your place?" This time I didn't hesitate before saying yes. And I'll just add one last thing, having sex for the first time, and getting high both before and after with the girl you had sex with, feels amazing.

So anyway, I know I'm running long here, but apparently my friend had gone and talked to this girl after I rejected the notion that she was interested, and had told her to just go for it, because there "was a 100% chance it would work." She knew that I wasn't great at picking up girls, even when they are eye-fucking me. And I will be forever grateful.

tl;dr - Girl at party was being unusually friendly, thought she was just trying to smoke my pot, female friend tells her I'm inept with girls so she should just come up and start kissing me, female friend ends up wing-manning me into losing my virginity.

Got drunk with a dude friend and after everything else flew over his head I skipped straight to the part where I grabbed and kissed him. He just laughed and laughed and I thought well at least he's being nice about it. So we finished our drinks and I shrugged my shoulders and went home.

Months later when I joked around with him over IM (we are now in different countries) that it was among the funnier ways I've ever been rejected, he said "You actually wanted to sleep with me? I thought that was a joke, I thought you were kidding! What the hell!!" Yeah the old put my tongue in your mouth punchline, it's a classic.

Edit: My first gold! Thanks everyone. I think if we've learned anything today it's that you should never use tongues where words will do, or something.

My now fiance and I were going for a walk around Christmas when we were still "just friends". It was snowing and beautiful and I had been crushing on him for a long time. There were lots of couples around, and I commented on how awesome it is to hold hands in the snow. He smiled and said "I've never held someone's hand in the snow, I wouldn't know." I responded with a wink, wiggled my fingers at him, and said "Well, we're gonna have to fix that."

He gave me a sad smile and said "It would be nice to hold hands, with someone like you."

This was not the first move I had made. It took 7 months, and me initiating a "tickle fight" before he made a move. He said he didn't think he was good enough for me or that I liked him. I still call him my little emo kid.

I'm not sure all men are this oblivious, but one time I was texting my boyfriend late at night and I said "my bed is lonely (;" (winky face and all) and he responded with "my bed is small". I still make fun of him for this.

"Cause I've been looking for someone to help me out and stuff."
And reddit, I was so excited that he was talking to me about this, because I had recently made a discovery.

"Did you know this campus has a math lab?" I was enthusiastic. "It's amazing. Around finals and midterms it gets crowded, but this time of year the math tutors are just waiting for someone to ask for help. A couple of the math professors just hang out there sometimes because, I dunno... they love math or something. It's been a life saver. And it's all free!"

"Yeah..." he said, clearly not excited as I was. "I really just don't like studying alone. You know... alone."

"That's the best part," I loud-whispered, "YOU'RE NEVER ALONE IN THE MATH LAB!"

He gave me a disgusted look, thanked me, and left. It wasn't until a day later, as I was pondering why he seemed so underwhelmed when I was being so helpful, that I realized.

Ah shit.

Edit: Thanks for the Reddit Gold, friend. I had no idea this comment would be so popular.

I think you're onto something. But lose the commenters; they're too slow unless you have them on staff. Instead, use a look-up table with popular intentions, sorted by the hint. A small program can use the hint as the key, and find the corresponding intention. Then you can sell it to guys as an app for $0.99 and make a killing.

Then for good measure, you make a similar app for women, but in reverse. That way, you're controlling the inputs and outputs. Missed hints may be a thing of the past!

I've realized a lot from this thread.. I'm 23, and I work with a lot of 40+ year old women. From the information on this thread, they all want to instantly jump my bones! Looks like I'm going to work naked tomorrow. The internet has never failed me before, so why would it fail me now? I have this in the bag!

It was the other way around. I was talking to this male model (he was oh so gorgeous) and he asked me what I was up to after the event (some car show we both worked at).
I said I´d go to bed because I was so tired. He tries again by saying something about how it would be nice to relax with a drink after a long day of work, wouldn´t it?
I said that I went out the night before and had had too much, so it would be just me and my bed tonight.My friend hit me when we walked away.

I was out with a group of friends and happened to have a crush on one of the guys. We were chatting about all sorts of things, including the "type" of person we're usually attracted to. I gave a description of him, including his flannel shirt. I even said I wanted to find a taller guy to "climb like a tree." He just didn't catch on, even though I knew him to be a rather intelligent fellow. I found out later that he had lost some crazy weight and was completely clueless about girls.

related story: i brought a girl from trinidad over. She wanted to pillow fight so i thought i was IN. She pummels me hard as shit with her pillow and steals mine. i take them away from her and she pushes me, then straddles me... and then punches me in the face. Im like "wtf" and she says "what are you gonna do about it?" I pin her down and make my move and she stops me... apparently she just wanted to fight -.-

I actually picked up on this hint. She wasn't straddling me or anything, but she challenged me to a thumb wrestle and after I won she said, "Well, what do you want as your prize?" I took it as a sign and went for it.

Reminds me of that joke. 2 engineers are talking and one says a girl cycled up to me yesterday, stripped naked and said "take what you want". I took her bicycle. The other engineer says, yeah, her clothes would probably be the wrong size...

I know a lot of guys are saying that they want women to be straight forward, but I am that way all the time and most guys say they want me to be more coy. I had a date last week and we were being really flirty and he asked me what I would say if he asked me to come home with him. I replied that I would go and was my main reason for meeting him for drinks at 10p during the middle of the week. He said he wished I wasn't so honest about everything :(

I went home and used my vibe instead.

EDIT: Thanks for all the love. I won't give up on being straight forward..yet. For context, that was the third time we'd gone out (he lives 35 minutes away, but we'd talk on the phone/text almost everyday) and so I thought that he knew my personality well enough by then.

In our defence... I've often interpreted somethings as being obvious flirts which were really not. You try to make a move and it's all awkward... so pardon the intentional stupidity because some of us get tired of being shot down after misreading signals.

I had a girl that I worked and went to school with who was like this. While at work she would literally stick her hands in my back pockets, and grab my ass, (she was cute enough that I didn't feel totally violated) and constantly shoot me flirtacious glances. So one day i ask her if she wants to go to a party with me after work, and she kinda laughs it off and informs me that she already has a boyfriend. After that I just fucking gave up on interpreting signals.

It's all good, a few weeks later I can to my senses and realized she was a spoiled brat with a crazy sense of self entitlement. That and she was always bitching about the fact that she was actually expected to work. One day at work during one of her bitching fests she literally says to me, "I don't even know why I have to have this job, I am way too pretty to be working here." I lost all respect for her after that statement.

Yep. I have one female friend who grinds up on me at parties, effectively stalks everything I do, and constantly flirts with me (my friends all saw it even before I did, and my parents immediately thought we were dating when I ran into her once). She has a boyfriend and no interest. I had another girl who would just glance at me, which to her was a full on "fuck me". I stopped trying to read signals and go with what I want, and stop giving a shit if I get shot down.

Yessssss gold star post right there my friend. Don't try and read the 'hidden signals'; if you like someone, ask them out - if they say no, ask someone else out. Repeat until you're dating someone you like and they're delighted because someone they like asked them out.

I met a guy when I was 20 and he was 23. We had just started hanging out and getting to know each other, nothing serious. I really, really liked him. He was very shy and I found it adorable. One day, he invited me over to watch a few movies with him. We were sitting on his bed watching them and all I could think was "he really needs to make a move already" (I'm really impatient). I thought for sure he didn't like me. I mean, I always made him laugh and I never considered myself ugly or anything, so I figured maybe he would go for it. Anyway, his bed was up against the wall and I was kinda propped up against the wall. I started to slowly slide my back down the wall until I was lower than him, hoping he would get the hint and kiss me. Nope. 30 minutes or so went by and I was getting aggravated, so I got out my phone and texted him and said, "So, are you gonna kiss me or what?" I was so nervous once I sent it. My heart was beating like crazy. His phone beeped and he reached for it. He saw my message and I thought I was going to die. You know what he did? He fucking started texting me back. SERIOUSLY? I just knew he didn't want me then. I checked my phone and it said "Look up." I smiled, looked up and he kissed me. ;)

Flash forward to now: We've been together for five years, married for two and we just had a baby girl a few months ago :)

my boyfriend and i have been together for almost a year and a half and I am his first semi-serious relationship (pretty much his first relationship in general)...we are both in our early twenties, and although he has improved in his ability to understand what it is I'm trying to convey, usually I just tell him what I am thinking/what I want. If I want to bang him, i just say "I want to bang (etc) you"....if I want to cuddle or what have you, then I say it. Likewise, if he's being an asshole, I tell him he's being an asshole...and he does the same thing to me. If I'm being a crazy girl, he says so....It makes more sense just to be honest and stop beating around the bush. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Enter mid-twenties me, living in a small apartment with a female roommate. She's spunky and adventurous and and I'm stodgy and socially awkward, and I can't help but be super attracted to her. It's wintertime and cold, so I'm sitting at home reading a book when she gets home with a wooden box and yells, "Tada!" The box is filled with little dried mushrooms and she's decided that now is the perfect time for an ADVENTURE! I explain that I've never done any drugs, really, but she's all about how it's great! Flash forward to me wanting to impress her by being all interesting, so we've eaten the mushrooms, bundled up, and are wandering into the woods behind our apartment, where we've never gone before. Hallucinations, deep secrets revealed, hugging, laughing, crying. Through all of it I manage not to just blurt out my feelings, somehow. Hours later we get back home, the mushrooms are on the decline, and we sit on my bed and talk. It's cold so I put a blanket on myself, then hell why not, on her too. She pulls in and snuggles into me. Holy hell, I think, this is big. She's all touchy and eye-contacty. I go for it. I move my head in for the kiss. I'm two inches from her and her whole body goes rigid, just straight as a plank. Her eyes are huge and she is just completely terrified. I don't think I've ever seen anybody look that surprised and scared. I back out just as quick as I can, laughing and playing it off, just scrambling. I can't even look at her so I get up to go to the bathroom. When I get back she's not on my bed anymore, she's in the main room. It's awkward, so I make more and more silly jokes trying to stabilize this tailspin. We talk for another half hour, it gets a little better, then we go to bed. And we never talked about it again. THE END

This is really the kind of logic my friends use. "I wore a push up bra. A PUSH UP BRA! WHY didn't he take me home?. I told him I thought that my roommate was at the movies! And then I sort of smiled! HE'S SUCH AN IDIOT!"
I... don't talk to them about guys much anymore.

I said I was cold and exclaimed how warm his hands were and cuddled him. After conversing like that for a while, listening to his heartbeat, telling him he smelled really good, and letting my voice get throaty, I looked up at him, letting my eyes flicker between his lips and eyes, parted my lips sightly, and leaned towards him. He smiled and kept talking about whatever it was. Then I said I was still cold and asked if he would mind us cuddling in his bed. I wrapped a leg around him and he didn't respond. I couldn't tell if he was being oblivious or just wasn't interested, so I said I really wanted him right then and there. He said he wasn't interested in me like that, he just wanted to be friends, and then exclaimed how proud he was of himself for finally being able to reject a girl's sexual advances.

This has happened to me with three different men. I have been friend-zoned more times than I can count. I've given up on ever getting laid again.

I was hanging out with one girl last spring semester. I asked her if she wanted to hang out later. She said yes, her roommate would be gone later so we could go to her dorm and find something on Netflix, winky face. I went to her dorm. She changed shirts in front of me. We cuddled into her bed and started watching a movie. She puts my arm around her. I stroke her hair for a minute. I stop stroking her hair. She says don't stop, that feels good. Ten minutes later I tilt her chin up and go for the kiss. She says, "no...I don't think that's a good idea."

When my boyfriend and I had just started dating, we were with our friends on my living room couch and I was really in the mood, so I squeezed his hand, looked him straight in the eye, and got up and went into my room (staring at him the whole way) and sat on the bed.
I thought I was pretty obvious with everything, but I guess not enough because I was in there ten minutes by myself before I just came back out and sat on the couch. He hasn't a clue.

Ugh! Happened to me on my last date. After almost 10 minutes of giggling and stuttering I finally ovaried up and kissed him first. Luckily, he caught on and took over from there but it was pretty irritating for a while.

I said to my boyfriend one time " gee I'm really cold" hoping he would put his arm around me, or offer his jacket. he said, " yeah you should have brought a heavier jacket" they don't get hints, men are very direct. I asked him to hold me close and he did then. You just have to keep it simple w men.

Basically, it's like crying a woman. You don't ask them if they want to talk, you just pull them into your chest and cry them. Likewise, you don't ask them if they need your jacket, you just put it on them. In other words, use them like a coat rack. If they say anything, just say that you were warm and watch them smile.

I had a serious crush on a hot customer. He used to chat with me sometimes when he'd come in at the end of the day. One day he was like "so, what do you like to do when you're not working?" I was so shocked he asked me a question like that, I mumbled something about playing with my dogs, which is great since I run a pet related business. Not only did I miss a chance to start a real conversation with the guy but I made myself look like a huge nerd in the process. >.<